Column: How we will all have fun by camping out at home

By Michele Hewitson

It's heartening to be reminded that whatever happens on New Year's Eve, the cockroaches will survive - and that one cutely named Ken has been bred by some fevered advertising agency mind in an attempt to instil in us a survivalist mentality.

Last time I checked our emergency rations we had a can of beans and 27 cans of the cat food that poses as salmon pate and costs about as much.

Until Ken crawled into the national consciousness, I figured that would see us through a three-day period which usually involves two days of sleeping off the poison of the big night.

Apparently not. It's going to be more fun this time. We just might get to play at being militia men.

Holed up at home for three days actually sounds like the perfect holiday. I'll finally be able to bring in the barbie and cook on it in the middle of the lounge the way they do in that telly ad.

We'll need something to cook on it, I suppose. Bangers seem appropriate given the end-of-the-world connotations. White bread and train smash (known as tomato sauce to some and also nicely resonant of disaster) to wrap them in - it sounds like bliss.

Actually, it sounds like camping - which I hate because of insects like Ken - but camping in heaven.

In camping heaven there will be drink; a lot of it and a wide selection because there is no guarantee, is there, that we will get out of here in three days.

There will be cigarettes, cartons of them, because, getting into the spirit of things, we are almost definitely going to die anyway.

I suppose we might fill up a few water bottles and buy in a few tins of white truffles, but I somehow imagine we won't get around to it.

I will go to the library and take out the maximum number of books allowed: an impressive stack with something unreadable, possibly the sequel to The God of Small Things, on top and the murder mysteries for reading by torchlight on the bottom.

Will we ensure, as recommended, that we have wads of cash on hand? If shops are going to be open, what the hell are we all doing huddling at home as though civilisation (read shopping) as we know it has closed down for the weekend?

Didn't think of that now, did you, Ken?